SCOTUS allows gun restrictions for people suspected of domestic violence

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In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday in a major gun rights case that protective orders can bar people accused of domestic violence from possessing firearms. Zackey Rahimi of Texas unsuccessfully argued that restricting access to guns to people subject to domestic violence orders is unconstitutional.

“Since its inception, the nation’s firearms laws have included provisions prohibiting persons who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” the court’s majority opinion said.

The case was the Supreme Court’s first major ruling on firearms since a 2022 decision that set a new standard for determining whether gun laws are constitutional. Friday’s ruling overturned a fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that found the Second Amendment protected domestic violence abusers’ right to firearms.

The only dissent was Justice Clarence Thomas, author of the 2022 decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision provided additional context for interpreting the new test for firearms laws. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion that the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen already made clear that certain firearms restrictions are lawful under the Second Amendment if they fall within “the historic tradition of firearms regulation.” He added that it is the government’s responsibility to justify regulating gun restrictions that are part of this historic tradition.

In Friday’s ruling, Roberts suggested that other courts had misunderstood the methodology behind Bruen.

“These precedents were not intended to suggest law trapped in amber,” wrote the president of the Supreme Court.

Advocates for victims of domestic violence celebrated Friday’s decision and its impact in Texas, where access to firearms and domestic violence have dire consequences.

“This ruling recognizes that the life of a survivor of domestic violence takes precedence over the ability of perpetrators of violence to retain their weapons when they are prohibited by law,” said Molly Voyles, director of public policy at TCFV.

Gun Owners of America, which filed an amicus brief in the case, criticized the ruling. The gun rights group has admitted that Rahimi is a dangerous person and, due to his imprisonment, he has now been banned from possessing weapons.

“These restraining orders do not prove that someone is guilty of committing a violent crime, and they are often used by lawyers and issued voluntarily by judges in divorce proceedings,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of GOA. “But this ruling will disarm others who have never actually committed domestic violence.”

In an attempt to explain Bruen, Friday’s opinion argued that the Second Amendment guarantees access to modern weapons that did not exist when the nation was founded.

“By the same logic, the Second Amendment allows for more than just regulations identical to those that existed in 1791.” – wrote Roberts.

In Friday’s ruling, the justices found that the Fifth Court misinterpreted Bruen by ordering that firearms laws must have a “historical twin” rather than a “historical equivalent.”

Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Brett Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor wrote concurring opinions. Justice Elena Kagan signed off on Sotomayor’s concurring opinion.

In his dissent, Thomas wrote that not a single historic regulation justifies restricting gun ownership by people suspected of domestic violence.

Court documents show Rahimi was charged with five shootings in the Arlington area over the course of a month in the winter of 2020. Those incidents included shooting at a police officer’s car and firing a gun into the air in front of a Whataburger after his friend’s credit card was declined. Before the February 2020 shooting, a state court issued a protective order against Rahimi after he allegedly attacked his girlfriend. Rahimi was indicted by a federal grand jury for possessing a firearm while subject to a domestic violence protective order.

Rahimi argued in court that the charge violated his constitutional rights, which the courts initially disagreed with. However, following the landmark Bruen decision, in which the Supreme Court established a new standard that modern gun control laws must be “consistent with the text of the Second Amendment and historical understanding,” the Rahimi case was reconsidered, and the Fifth Circuit ruled for his advantage.

According to the Texas Council on Family Violence, domestic violence in Texas has steadily increased in recent years. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of reported cases of domestic violence increased by 33%, and the number of women killed by an intimate partner almost doubled. According to TCFV, in 2022 in Texas, intimate partners killed 129 women with firearms.

TCFV’s 2022 domestic violence review shows that the number of domestic violence crimes reported by the Texas Department of Public Safety increased 10% in 2022 to 254,339 compared to 231,207 in 2021.

Eric Ruben, an assistant professor of law at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, doesn’t expect Rahimi’s decision to clear up much of the confusion seen in lower courts. Ruben said the Rahimi decision will protect some modern gun laws from challenges in the post-Bruen landscape, but there is still room for subjectivity in how courts apply historical principles to laws regulating assault weapons and other contemporary issues.

Even though six conservative justices signed on to Thomas’s opinion in the Bruen case, Ruben said it was telling that it took more than 100 pages of the opinion to reach the conclusion that Rahimi should not have access to guns.

“We will likely see a steady stream of Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court,” Ruben said. “Because in the absence of further guidance from the judges, lower courts will continue to err.”

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